the struggle to buy your first home

As a mum with grown up kids in Tunbridge wells I feel desperately sad when I look at the housing situation around us.

The latest figures from the office of National Statistics, (October 2025) are depressing!

Average house prices £460,000, monthly rent averaging £1,474 pcm, even the cheapest starter homes for first time buyers are around £365,000. These are bolt standard homes, the kind ordinary families were able to buy.

I remember when me and my husband were starting out. We literally scraped together a deposit and purchased a terraced property in High Brooms in 1992 for the princely sum of £38,000. It was hard but possible.

Back in the day, there were proper council estates built for people on normal wages. Our parents lived in them and later purchased them through the Right to Buy Scheme. It gave us all security and a sense of real achievement, a proper step up.

When the then Tory government began selling off council houses they raised an estimated £47 billion. In my view all this money should have gone back into building more affordable housing. Instead, half  went to the local authorities who were expected to use it to clear their debts, not to be invested in bricks and mortar! What a colossal mistake and shame as this short sighted approach has in part contributed to the situation we are now in. Its been estimated that we need to build 400,000 to 500,000 new homes a year just to keep pace and tackle the backlog. We are nowhere near this.

My kids are in their twenties, working hard but unable to buy or rent their own properties. Even on an “average” salary of around £30,000 with minimal debt and a 10% deposit, you may achieve a mortgage of £135,000. That is nowhere near enough in this area. The sweet spot for a better rate mortgage is a 20% deposit. How on earth can you save that when rent will eat a huge chunk of your wages?

Our kids are being let down, what chance of marriage and children when you can’t afford to move out. That sense of despair when you feel you are doing everything “right” but the ladder has been pulled up. Owning your own home should not be an impossible dream. The housing market has changed beyond recognition. The previous Tory government and now Labour talk about building but the numbers remain tiny and local infrastructure, roads, schools, doctors  aren’t ready either. Small local developments could make all the difference but they are few and far between.

I hate to admit it but I despair for our twenty somethings. Without a real shift and genuine investment in affordable homes, a rethink of how we use the money from past sales and the actual building on the scale that is needed mine and so many other kids are locked out of the housing market.

A home, a family, a future, it shouldn’t be this hard.

KERRY THORNE